NEIGHBORS CONFRONT GANG AND WIN BACK TURF

Anne KeeganCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Everyone on the street agrees. It has been a most remarkable summer.

The guy who dealt in stolen bicycles got the hint and moved away. The graffiti painted out earlier in the spring failed to reappear. Drug dealing has dwindled to a trickle. Rocks haven`t been pelted at people`s windows and not one parked car has been tipped over and set on fire.

Most important, the 20 or 30 gang members who regularly appeared on the curbs the summer before carrying baseball bats and wearing `I dare you` grins haven`t shown up at all.

''All of us on the block are in a state of wonderment,'' says Judy Glazebrook, who lives on the 4300 block of North Kenmore Avenue. ''We are like small children looking up at big city buildings--our mouths open and our eyes big. We have to pinch ourselves to believe it.''

''It`s so quiet on this street this summer,'' says Virginia Sexton,

''that we call this neighborhood `South Winnetka`. It`s been like suburban life compared to what we went through here last summer.''

During the summer of 1984, the 4200 to 4400 blocks of North Kenmore Avenue were the scene of a classic urban battle between gang members looking to stake out new turf and residents on the street who just wanted to live in peace.

The street looked like a battleground, littered with burned-out or busted-up cars, gang war slogans smeared on walls, beer bottle chards cluttering playlots and trashed-out buildings used as gang hideaways and headquarters.

A handful of the neighbors stood up to this. They came out of their homes and met eye to eye with the gang members every time they were drinking beer, selling dope and breaking windows. They took photographs of gang members breaking the law, wrote down license plate numbers and reported it all to the police.

They chased absentee landlords who failed to board up their abandoned property. Once the buildings got boarded up and the gang still hung out in front, they painted axle grease on the curbs and steps so the youths couldn`t sit down. They called each other on a neighborhood hot line and then called the police when trouble broke out.

When the police didn`t show, they called again. Desperate, they got 300 signatures on a petition they took to the police district asking for help. The first sentence in the petition was a statement of fact. ''Gangs,'' it read,

''have taken over our street.''

''We`d actually see a red rusty station wagon drive up every night and let these gang members out,'' says Jeanne Duvall. ''It was older gang members from other areas driving in the younger ones to stake out new territory. These guys weren`t from the neighborhood. Our street was going to be part of their annexed territory. Or so they thought.''

Despite the neighbors` plea, nights that summer on Kenmore Avenue became more raucous, the mood more angry, the street more violent, the gang more out of control.

On Labor Day weekend a year ago, Turk Glazebrook and his wife, Judy, were up at 6:15 a.m. They heard a commotion out on the street and saw a group of 20 gang members trying to break into a neighbor`s house. Turk went out to help the neighbor and Judy stayed inside to call the police. By the time she got out to her husband, he was on the ground, covered with dirt and blood, trying to crawl under a car to protect himself from the gang members who had surrounded him. They were beating him repeatedly with baseball bats and two-by-fours.

''That was truly the trigger, the turning point on this street,'' says Joe Cain, who heads the neighborhood block club. ''No longer was every problem considered an isolated incident. People realized what happened to Turk could have happened to any one of us. We knew we had to do something or it would be all over for all of us.''

Turk Glazebrook`s arm was broken from trying to fend off the attack. His skull was so battered he was put into intensive care, underwent surgery and was in the hospital for a month. Five adult gang members, none of them from the neighborhood, were arrested and charged with attempted murder. They are still awaiting trial. Three more juveniles were arrested, tried and are in custody. Scores of neighbors have gone to court on every case.

''What happened to Turk was never going to happen again on this street to anyone,'' says one neighbor. ''That was it. They tried to kill him. We`d had it.''

From then on, if one gang member was seen on the street, the neighbors have swarmed out and chased them off. They held a mass meeting and decided they had to work together to make the street livable and sane. Last winter they organized a Christmas party for all the small children on the street. More than 100 of them came and each left with presents. They got a computer company to offer free computer lessons to children under 12 on the street and two dozen showed up faithfully for the classes.

When spring came, they organized a graffiti paint-out. It, too, worked. When several gang members showed up at their community meetings and tried to intimidate them, they told them to ''get lost.''

They went to Housing Court and got a judge to order that one of the abandoned buildings where the gang was headquartered be demolished. Flowers and vegetables now grow there in a collective neighborhood victory garden. They formed a greening committee and litter patrols. They planted grass in an empty lot and took the rubble lying there to form a wall to keep abandoned cars from collecting there.

They cleaned up the playlots, police it themselves and children now play there again. Neighbors started putting up handsome wrought-iron fences in front of their buildings. Grass is growing in front yards where there had been none before. And a plan is afoot to turn the area beneath the elevated tracks along the wall of Graceland cemetery into a park. They have had an arboretum promise to donate the trees.

Since the attack on Turk Glazebrook, the police not only respond immediately when the neighbors call; a walking cop now swings down Kenmore Avenue on his route.

But most important, the gang is gone.

''I think they got the message,'' says Judy Glazebrook. ''We were going to tolerate no more illegal activity on the street. With eight of their members in jail, they learned we meant business. With them gone, the drug dealing is down, the vandalism on cars is down, the stealing of bikes is gone, the breaking of our windows is over.''

''Last summer all you saw were gang members carrying their baseball bats. This summer, the only bat I`ve seen was actually being used in a baseball game,'' says neighbor Duvall.

''We`re doing so much better now with less litter and abandoned cars that when the people came to our street to shoot the movie `Code of Silence` they had to import litter and some junk cars to make it look like the old days.''

''It`s still a struggle here,'' says Cain. ''This will never be Astor Street. But it can be a safe, decent, clean place to live if we keep this up.''

''It really has been a remarkable summer for us,'' says Virginia Sexton.

''The gang has totally disappeared. After Turk was attacked, the word got out on the street that the heat was on from the neighbors and they would have to go. We weren`t going to go away. We`d come out and face them down every time they tried to come back. And they gave up finally. They went away. I do feel sorry for whatever neighborhood they pounce on next. But those people will learn they have to do just what we did, `cause it works.''